Chapter 1506
: Is this the signal that will determine the winner?
Power flowed in continuously.
Faith rises from every fold of suffering and hope on the earth, like the tide, like a torrent, or perhaps it can be described as silent light, overflowing fog, or even crystallization from sighs. It rises from every crack in the soil soaked with suffering, bursting forth from every heartbeat that pauses in despair yet reignites with the slightest hope, from the cold glint of a broken sword on the battlefield, from the trembling sporangia of a fungal cap at the bottom of the abyss, from the dial of a laboratory instrument that finally comes to a standstill, from the prostrate prayers of a tribal shaman… thread by thread, it detaches from the material body, transforming into an invisible and intangible yet truly existing trickle.
This process is neither a ritual nor a sacrifice, but a much larger and more natural metabolic process, much like the body's immune system, which sends out warning signals upon detecting the invasion of external viruses. It is calling upon every pore on the skin, every blood vessel in the body, and even every nerve in the cerebral cortex. A factory larger than the Feather Mine, eight thousand meters underground, and more sophisticated than the magical research department of the Witch Society, is operating at full speed, spewing out flame-like breaths from its chimneys and shaking a thunderous pulse on the instruments.
This factory has no physical form, yet it permeates every corner of Atorica. Its production lines are built from heritage and memory, its energy source is hope and resilience, and its products are condensed beliefs. Every accelerated heartbeat, every deeper breath, every step forward chosen even in dire straits contributes to this invisible factory, making its operation ever more magnificent and precise, until it becomes part of the laws of nature.
This land called Atoliga was not originally inhabited by living beings, yet sometimes inanimate objects are more in harmony with the laws of nature than the living. Within a complex and self-consistent organic system, it sustains countless life forms, representing boundless vitality, and naturally acquires unparalleled adaptability. One might imagine it as a more silent beast, yet no beast can remain indifferent to a threat that is imminent.
If a false god or evil deity skilled in the ways of faith were to witness this incredible scene, they would be astonished by the harmonious and fluid flow of these beliefs, as if propelled by a great will, composing a beautiful poem. It was undoubtedly Atorica calling upon the creatures of this land, leading them to believe in the girl's promise and entrust their hopes to her for the salvation of themselves and all things in the world. This process of self-salvation was also a process of adaptation.
An invisible sound pierced through the rain curtain woven by Perec, a mixture of the sweet, metallic scent of rust and the pale smell of disinfectant, like rain rising in reverse, trailing slender, transparent tails of light, converging towards the center of the battlefield. The process was eerily silent, devoid of hymns or resonating prayers, only the vast, overwhelming surge of countless wishes over the barriers of the real world, gently plunging into a bottomless ocean.
Ovira also let go of her self-imposed limitations and accepted them without reservation. Rather, this is what the Mystic Kingdom seeks: inclusion, understanding, and then sublimation.
It was a truly wondrous feeling, a two-way process: Ovira was understanding and integrating the flood of knowledge, while the endless knowledge, according to its own logic and laws, was redefining and reshaping this being who was trying to master it. Her consciousness was expanding rapidly; every instant, the equivalent of a civilization's millennia-long accumulation of information flowed through her mind. She saw particles dancing in the microscopic world, heard the first song of stars at their birth, felt time curving at the edge of the gravitational well, and understood every chance and inevitability in life's long journey from inorganic to organic.
Seeking logic amidst paradox, and truth amidst fallacy, geometry's meaning is based on abstraction, while topological answers concern reality. In this realm of "knowledge" and "reason," constantly collapsing and reconstructing itself, every thread of faith is like a unique key, inserted into the lock of a corresponding concept, triggering an unimaginable chain reaction. Only one will can answer them, but as it touches upon knowledge, this known or unknown knowledge also interprets it in reverse, attempting to mold it into something truly meaningful—
The All-Knowing One.
……
Perec was somewhat breathless, for she was witnessing a similar scene firsthand. If one were to use mundane words to describe a young queen who was stepping into the realm of the gods, she would inevitably fall into a state of inadequacy. Yet even the plague queen was not exempt from such clichés. At this moment, only descriptions such as "magnificent," "wonderful," or "incredible" could come to mind.
Beyond biological evolution, transcending the awakening of mortal form, overlooking the collapse of celestial bodies, and ultimately tracing back to the reconstruction of the universe. This process is irreversible, beginning with shedding the constraints of physical form. This is a necessary step for every young woman to fully awaken her royal power. Perhaps the mortal world is too insignificant, and the physical body too fragile, insufficient to bear the great power to choose the world. Therefore, they always need to descend to earth in a new form.
Both the Fate King and the Plague King awaken through rebirth, subtly hinting at their determination to completely sever ties with their past. The Dark Witch awakens through fire, perhaps to show that only through the tempering of flames can a heart become as cold as iron. The way that belongs to the Mystic King is through separation.
Decomposition, stripping away, and then the most perfect form can be obtained. This is the essence of knowledge. Just as mathematicians always strive to summarize the most complex theorems with the simplest formulas, or philosophers always like to express the most obscure philosophical principles with the most ordinary language, the ultimate goal of all systems is to simplify the complex, and even the gods are no exception.
As the laws of nature were elevated, Ovira's form began to exhibit an elegant dispersion. Soft wisps of light diffused along the edges of her silhouette, as if she were immersed in a solution diluted with starlight. Her materiality was being slowly replaced by some more subtle form of existence, like the binding of a book being gently pulled away. The inner pages were about to suspend, recombine, and display their infinite connections in a way that transcended physics, logic, and even thought.
Then, the butterfly wings slowly unfurled from the light. In stark contrast to Pereira's decaying wings, which struggled to emerge from the depths of her bones and were stained with the colors of internal organs and pathological patterns, Ovila's wings were more like a pair of universes. The base of the wings was a pure and almost ethereal deep black, which was also the curtain of the universe. On this profound background, light manifested and wove itself in the form of knowledge. In the part close to the body, there flowed soft bands of light like spiral arms of the Milky Way, shimmering with the magnificent ripples of nebula birth and the brilliant spots of stars dying, as if the evolution of a universe had been completed with the flapping of the butterfly wings. The bands of light spread outward, gradually differentiating into countless delicate and dazzling veins. Each vein was composed of flowing symbols, geometric proofs, chemical equations, or historical narratives of mortal civilizations. They flowed, collided, and gave rise to new branches at a speed close to thought, like living worms, devouring the nutrients in the universe to grow stronger. This invisibly reflected another characteristic of knowledge: constant renewal, never ceasing.
The process of these butterfly wings growing is the process of the rise of civilization and the transmission of knowledge. If we trace back from the moment the universe was born to today, then its vastness is enough to cast a constantly pulsating and changing shadow of light behind the gods, covering the other half of the battlefield. What flows in the shadow is not disease, but a microcosm of the rise and fall of civilizations and the sparks of wisdom of living beings.
As butterfly wings, they scatter scales and powder when they dance, but unlike the plague memories brought by the corrupted butterfly, the new star butterfly scatters the seeds of knowledge. It may be a fragment of a lost poem, a key lemma that has not been fully proven, or a modern re-evolution of ancient wisdom. After they detach from the butterfly wings, some sink into the earth, some rise into the clouds, and some drift to those creatures still struggling in despair in the distance, bringing them the eternal crystallization they have created with their own hands.
As the pair of star-shaped butterfly wings, radiating endless wisdom and possibilities, fully unfolded, as if projecting a grand and vast cosmic library onto the mortal world, Ovira slowly raised her head.
The form beneath the butterfly wings did not swell to an inhuman size like the plague king to display extraordinary divinity; it remained the appearance of a normal young girl. However, her skin exhibited an astonishing transparency, as if the purest crystal encased a boiling galaxy within. Beneath the crystal-like tides, what was revealed was no longer blood vessels and bones, but crisscrossing veins of light. They were undoubtedly alive, still breathing and pulsating, performing calculations and analyses.
Her dress, once a memory left by the ancient kingdom of Beman for its last princess, will now become part of earthly knowledge, like countless gently floating pages, orbiting the star at the center of the universe in a cyclical motion. The laws of the world, like truth, are immutable; however, the phenomena that shape truth and the languages that interpret it are constantly changing. Thus, the contents of the pages also change: sometimes filled with obscure ancient herbal formulas and astrological annotations; sometimes with mechanical drawings as precise as the internal structure of a clock… These pages turn without wind, their rustling sounds converging into a distant, sacred, and magnificent background sound, as if all ages, all races, all buildings—whether called libraries, grand archives, or various other names—all fulfilling the same function, are breathing simultaneously, creating their own miracles.
The most radical change occurred in Her eyes and hair. Those eyes, which had been like a nebula ever since the young man and his companions met the princess of the past kingdom in the ancient castle deep in the mountains, now seemed to have all their starlight swallowed and contained by a single ocean, leaving only a black hole of emotion, scrutinizing the birth and death of the universe. Her platinum-gold hair was now completely spread out, each strand freed from the constraints of gravity and form, transforming into delicate tendrils shimmering with a faint starlight, their ends like the tentacles of a jellyfish, probing into the void, precisely anchoring countless individual consciousnesses offering their faith to her, like the gentle light of a lighthouse brushing against the side of a drifting ship on the sea. Through these billions of connection points, the joys and sorrows, desires, fragments of memory, and unfulfilled dreams of the mortal world, like stardust captured by gravity, silently flowed into the endless ocean of knowledge within her, becoming part of this great library.
From the "Initial Explanation of the Spiritual" written by Saint Thommy and his thirteen disciples in their study of supernatural powers, to the ancient books by various alien races summarizing the laws of magic; from the spells and prescriptions of both witch doctors and sorcerers on yellowed parchment, to the exquisitely detailed anatomical atlas in Vesalius's "De humani corporis fabrica"... knowledge is repeatedly examined on the vertical axis of time and the horizontal axis of cognition, its mysterious and unknowable shell is peeled away layer by layer, revealing its essence as a natural phenomenon.
The newly born god stood silently in the radiant rain of knowledge, and surprisingly, his figure bore a striking resemblance to Perec—a similar loneliness and fragility. Perec was indeed lonely; after all, the plague monarchy was essentially a mechanism of evolution and elimination in the mortal world. In this brutal competition, the sacrifice of billions of lives and the overthrow of hundreds of civilizations were commonplace. No one could plead with the Creator for mercy; only awe and fear remained. Perec felt sorrow for all this, yet was powerless to change it. As everyone knows, the more one resists, the more confused one becomes; the more one rejects, the more lonely one becomes.
This is a kind of emptiness and loneliness.
The loneliness of mysterious royal power begins with an intense thirst for knowledge and an abundance of emotions. It's as if there's an unwritten rule in the world that the more knowledge one possesses, the harder it is to escape its constraints. Sometimes it makes you sensitive, fearful of everything in the world, afraid that the secrets you learn will eventually return in another form and harm you; because knowledge reveals connections, and connections often mean responsibility and risk. At other times, it makes you feel alienated from others, as if they are all mediocre, indulging in worldly power and profit, lacking both the desire to seek knowledge and the courage to explore. What you cherish, pursue, and are proud of is worthless to them. The gap in understanding is like an insurmountable chasm, separating you from the vast majority of people. If no one in the world can understand you, then loneliness becomes inevitable.
This is the inevitable predicament of the omniscient: connected to all things yet transcending their limits, a sober solitude. You understand everything, including the incomprehension of others; you embrace everything, including your own alienation. You become an eternal observer, recorder, and understander, and simultaneously an enigma that can never be fully comprehended.
At this moment, two reigns representing drastically different laws gaze at each other across a silent distance beneath the sky formed by battlefield ruins, amidst a strange spectacle where the torrent of faith and the brilliance of knowledge intertwine. On one side lies the embodiment of plague and elimination, carrying a corrupting grandeur and a sorrowful destiny; on the other, the sublimation of knowledge and understanding, shimmering with the brilliance of reason and the solitary clarity. Both are deities, both transcending the mortal realm, yet they resonate with each other in a subtle way.
But that by no means means understanding.
On the contrary, it is a signal that will determine victory or defeat, life or death. (End of Chapter)